Dear Santa (A Blazing Little Christmas)

by O'Reilly, Kathleen

  It was cold outside, but she didn’t feel it—she was warm and happy. Marvelously, gloriously happy. Two tall draft horses guided the sleigh, huffing their way along the mountain path. As they rounded a bend, Lake Placid appeared, nestled between the hills. She watched Cory, daring to brush the dark silk out of his eyes. Instead of pulling back, he quirked his lips in a half smile.

  The afternoon went on from there, roasting marshmallows by the fire in the main hall. He teased her that her mascara would melt. She slapped him on the thigh, but oops, missed, her hand lingering. His eyes darkened; she shrugged innocently.

  Supper was in the room. Salad and baked chicken, only in deference to what she now termed his sissy appetite. It didn’t matter what she ate, Rebecca was entranced. After he cleared away the dishes, he rubbed her feet until she was purring with delight as he found the exact place in her misshapen instep that cured all her pains.

  He talked to her about the houses he had demolished, and then rebuilt, his eyes lively as he walked her through the process. She listened, and fell head over heels in love with this very special man.

  In her heart, she’d always kept Christmas in a place far away from the rest of things. It was her talisman and her strength, but it wasn’t Christmas in her heart anymore. It was him. So rough and hard at times, so tender and awkward at others. They made love that night in front of the fire, and she watched him with selfish eyes, keeping him close and near.

  She watched over him while he slept, uncurled his fists when the nightmares came. He woke her in the morning, early, before dawn, and slid inside her, warmer than the sun.

  Monday continued as the day before. They made a snowman in the morning, made love in the afternoon. She fell asleep listening to Christmas carols. When she woke up early in the evening, Cory was waiting with a box.

  No wrapping paper, no bow. Plain and unadorned.

  “Got something,” he said, pushing it across the bed.

  She lifted the lid and dug through the tissue paper, only to find…

  A pair of wool socks with a neatly stitched pattern of snowflakes.

  Rebecca began to cry.

  Her mascara was running, she knew her mascara was running, and she couldn’t stop the silly tears from flowing down her cheeks, ruining the natural finish to her blush. Oh, heck.

  “Don’t cry, Bec,” he said, which made her laugh in her tears, because Cory wasn’t a “Bec” guy. He didn’t use nicknames, didn’t use endearments, anything that would personalize anything.

  Except for snowflake-patterned socks.

  Which started her bawling all over again.

  He pulled her into his arms, hardened, tough arms with work-roughened hands, and slowly he rocked her, like a child. It was done with a slow, hesitant movement, a man so unused to this. Unused to touch, unused to love.

  She cried for him, cried for the scars on his palms, cried for the nights he’d lost, and she cried for all the things that would never be righted.

  “You’re strong, Rebecca. Stronger than you’ll ever know,” he murmured against her hair, her face, covering her tears with his lips. He thought it was her pain that was killing her, but it was his.

  She wanted to lash out at the people who hadn’t cared about him when he was younger. Stupid people. People who didn’t know him, know what was buried inside. So deeply buried. She cried for a long time, and she knew he was worried and confused, but she couldn’t stop. At some point the kisses changed. No comfort anymore. There was an edge of desperation there, she tasted it in him, and she took shameless advantage. She wanted to feel him next to her, bare and raw, and soon he was. She used her mouth to love him, to taste the salty heat of his skin.

  He cried out when she took his sex in her mouth, his muscles straining, but she stroked him with her hands, with her mouth, soothing him, pleasuring him, loving him.

  It was so easy to love him, but he wouldn’t let her finish. He pulled her up, and then rose above her, so careful not to hurt her, but she was having none of that. She scored her fingers into his back, wringing a shudder from him.

  Then he thrust inside her, and she met his eyes, met his lips. Outside the snow began to fall again, the sounds of sleigh bells and laughter. Inside, it was quiet. So quiet she could hear her silent whispers.

  Later, when the sounds were gone, he touched her cheek, kissed her mouth, traced her eyes. His eyes were so worried, and she stroked his face. It should have been forever, but this wasn’t, and she knew it. It was there in his face.

  Cory was saying goodbye.

  * * *

  8 Tuesday, December 24

  The train ride from Lake Placid to her parents’ home in Connecticut was longer than she imagined. Fourteen hours of sitting, with nothing to do but think. Now she had a new regret weighing heavy on her. Cory Bell.

  He’d left while she was asleep. She knew that would be his way. Odd to have been strangers before Friday. Four days later and she had seen his soul.

  There were so many things that she should have told him. But he hadn’t said a word, and she hadn’t said a word. And so they had a solitary, magical moment in time.

  Ha. She rubbed her heart because the pain was strong. Did love come that fast? Would it fade so quickly? She knew it wouldn’t. She had confided in him and he’d stayed by her.

  Outside the window, snow was falling, and she watched it, writing a name on the fogged glass like a schoolgirl. As the compartment heated, the name faded, but the memories would stay with her for a long, long time.

  * * *

  Cory was driving in the shadow of the Laurentian Mountains when the snow started to fly in huge, blinding flakes. The road was nearly invisible. He turned on the radio to drown out the yelling in his head, but there was nothing but Christmas music.

  Damn.

  He’d never heard yelling in his head before, never felt this pain screaming inside him, but he wished it would go away. He wanted the numbness back.

  He shoved the wiper switch to high, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t see jack, so he pulled off the road. Cory slammed his hands against the steering wheel because damn it, her suitcase weighed a ton and she’d have to change stations four times to get from the lodge to her parents’ place in Stafford Hill.

  He hadn’t meant to ask anything this morning, only wanted to disappear at dawn, but when he’d seen Mrs. Krause at the desk, he’d asked. Like he had a right to know.

  The old woman had sent him off with a ham sandwich, homemade chocolate-chip cookies, and a piece of paper with a Connecticut address on it. At the Canadian border, he’d stopped and looked at the paper. When he got to Montreal, he pulled into an electronics store and checked her route on a computer. Now here he was, nearly at his destination in the mountains, when the name-calling started.

  Idiot. Moron. Jerk. He deserved it. There was never a woman he wanted more than Rebecca. Why was he running away from the best, the purest woman he’d ever known, touched or loved?

  No, that was it. Cory Bell was done running. He was driving to Connecticut—in a blizzard.

  Six hours later, he had made it to New York. Barely. He stopped, got more coffee and bought a Connecticut map. The clerk was a teenager with a name tag that said Happy To Serve You.

  “Merry Christmas,” Cory said, slapping some change on the counter.

  The kid frowned, glanced at him as if he was a nut job. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

  It was three hundred and ten miles and some five hours later before he reached the tiny town where he’d find her. He should have been bone-tired, but after all the caffeine and something that felt suspiciously like hope in his heart, Cory was more alive than he’d ever been.

  The streets were decorated with lights that glimmered in the darkness, and he found the Neumann house easily—it was the one with thirty-seven cars lined down the block. In the window, the Christmas tree shined and beckoned. Just like her.

  Inside the security of his truck, his palms were sweating, and he rubbed them on hi
s jeans. For a long time he stared at the house, waiting for the familiar need to run. The clock on the dashboard said it was seven o’clock, five hours to midnight, and Christmas Day.

  Ten minutes later, then twenty minutes. Two hours later, with the moon high in the sky, he realized the panic inside him was gone. He had other needs now. Rebecca. He walked up the snow-covered sidewalk and rang the bell.

  An older woman answered, a light-up reindeer pin clipped to her sweater. “Mrs. Neumann?” he asked.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m here to see Rebecca.”

  “Certainly. Come in.”

  “I’ll wait outside, thanks,” he told her.

  She frowned, but nodded and went to find her daughter.

  The noises coming from inside the house were loud. Laughing, singing, a million voices were talking at once. Those sounds alone terrified him. This was new and strange. But he would do this. He could do this.

  Rebecca came to the door, and when she saw him she smiled at him, her eyes full of excitement and hope. He looked at her, looked at the sprig of mistletoe hanging over the door, and smiled back.

  Then he kissed her. Full on the lips.

  “Merry Christmas,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “I’m late. I had to go to Canada, but I’m back. For good.”

  “I told you the French language was overrated.”

  “Yeah,” was about all that he could say, because he had to kiss her again.

  Dear Santa,

  I just want you to know up-front that Rebecca is making me write this letter to thank you. She’s convinced you’re real. Me? It’ll take a while to convince. I’m not so big on the whole Christmas experience, and Santa, and “peace, love and joy,” but I’m starting to understand, especially the love part. That I’m getting down. So, thank you.

  Sincerely,

  Cory Bell

  Epilogue

  “What is it about the snow that makes people fall in love?”

  Roland heard his wife’s question as he burrowed in the refrigerator looking for the ingredients for his wife’s favorite cocktail. He knew some of the younger guys tried to sway their dates with expensive champagne, but Roland had learned long ago that hot chocolate was his wife’s aphrodisiac of choice.

  And Roland had learned never to argue with anything that made his wife sigh with happiness.

  “Well, it’s pretty.” He poured milk in a pan and turned it on just high enough that he wouldn’t scorch it while Helen kept her eyes trained on a spot out on the lake.

  Their home was a stone’s throw away from the inn. Close enough for them to run over in an emergency, but far enough away to let them feel as though they could get away from it all on the hard days.

  “Roland Krause.” She turned from the window to frown at him, clearly displeased. “Is that the best you can do? Your wife asks you a thoughtful question about the nature of love and what inspires something so profound and you suggest that snow is pretty?”

  He hid a grin as he stirred the cocoa into the pan, and attempted to give her question more serious thought. Because no matter how effective chocolate had been at lighting his wife’s fire in the past, he knew from long experience that the best aphrodisiac for a woman—for his woman—was a sense of mental connection.

  It had taken him ten years of marriage to come up with that, but it was a notion he’d put to good use since then. Who said you couldn’t teach an old guy new tricks?

  “You’re right.” He took his time thinking, waiting for his wife’s good humor to come around, the drink to warm and inspiration to strike. “I think it’s the freshness of the snow that does it.”

  He poured some cocoa for him and poured hers into her favorite pewter mug, the one they’d bought on a honeymoon trip up to Montreal. He still smiled to remember that.

  “What do you mean?” Helen drew closer, her eyes all for him now.

  He handed her the drink and kissed her on the forehead.

  “I think snow brings to mind fresh starts and new beginnings. It’s clean and it’s pretty, it makes the world around us quiet, and it forces us to stay home and look inward instead of racing around the countryside looking for happiness under any old rock.”

  He settled across the kitchen table from his wife in her blue bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, her hair pinned high on her head after her nightly bath. She smelled good. Looked better.

  And, ah yes, her eyes took on that soft glow of approval that told him he’d done something right.

  “And people think I’m the matchmaker in this house.” Her voice was full of chiding. “If only they knew what a romantic I’m married to.”

  “Me?” He straightened. “Helen Krause, it wasn’t me who called the cab company and tracked down the car on its way here all in the name of matchmaking. One of these days, a guest won’t appreciate that kind of thing, you mark my words.”

  “Did you see how happy they were, though?” Unrepentant, she grinned at him over her mug, the slightest hint of whipped cream on the corner of her mouth.

  He brushed it off with his thumb and tugged her chair closer.

  “No happier than we are.”

  “Isn’t it nice to share a little Christmas magic with our guests, Roland?” Her eyes sparkled even in the dim kitchen and he knew she wanted him to admit she’d chosen good targets for her gentle interference. “For the rest of my life I’ll be able to say ‘I married that handsome Eric Breslin.’”

  Roland laughed. “I suppose that comes with the territory of you being an ordained minister. But you might want to finish that sentence to include you ‘married Eric Breslin to Jessica Hayden.’”

  “Yes, I did,” Helen said with a satisfied smile. “And I’m sure they’re enjoying their honeymoon here at the lodge. Especially now that their families have gone home and left them alone. And don’t forget our success with Cory and Rebecca.”

  “Our success?”

  “You did help with the battery cables,” she reminded him gently. “Currently they’re happily on their way back to Manhattan. Together. She should have found him ten years ago…” Her voice trailed off for a minute. “These things take time. And then, of course, there’s Heather and Jared…”

  “No one could ever accuse you of not having the Christmas spirit, my love.” He stepped around that one diplomatically, or at least he thought he’d done so successfully judging by the way she smiled contentedly enough.

  Of course, her smile might have more to do with the effects of the cocoa kicking in. Making his move, he covered her hand with his.

  “Now, how about sharing a little Christmas magic with me?”

  Her eyes took on a wicked gleam, but she didn’t follow his cue to go upstairs to bed. Instead she raised her mug in a toast.

  “First, let’s drink to new beginnings. The Timberline Lodge—and the freshness of new snow—inspired some wonderful new beginnings this year.” She took a sip, dreamy-eyed at all the love sprouting up around the business they’d built together.

  “To new beginnings…and happy endings.” Roland grinned and clinked her mug with his. When he finished his drink he rose, offering her his hand.

  She smiled back, giving up her drink and letting him pull her into his arms. He’d never get enough of the happiness that came with knowing she was his for a lifetime, for every Christmas ever after.

  “Happy endings.” She kissed his cheek and tucked closer to him. “Now how can I say no to that?”