Daniel's Christmas

by M. L. Buchman

  For the humans at the table, he’d made a delicate salad in wooden bowls. And on the plate rested toasted burger buns and a pile of golden-brown French fries.

  “Will you—” Alice clamped her teeth down on her tongue in a hurry. She’d almost jokingly asked if he’d marry her. It would be funny in any other situation when a man cooked something that smelled this good. She would have said it if Emily Beale hadn’t stood right where Daniel now flipped burgers and asked Alice what she was going to do about Daniel being in love with her.

  What was she going to do?

  She didn’t want her mother’s past. Or her father’s. Trapped in a life neither of them understood. They’d started out happy. She’d seen the photos. The video of the wedding. Listened to them laugh, actually laugh together, as they filmed their only daughter’s first steps. A joy between them that had long since passed into the realm of impossible. So far gone that it was now unimaginable despite the evidence caught on tape.

  Whatever they’d had was long dead.

  Alice had sworn she’d never make that mistake.

  But would she?

  Was she capable of making that mistake, of letting love die?

  Would Daniel even let her screw it up that badly? This was a man who loved family. A grown man who had his family’s and his big sister’s photos on his dresser. He’d probably find some way to make her happier with each passing year. It poured out of him, straight from his heart. The question was, could she do the same for him?

  Hadn’t she answered her own question last night when she’d left the light on and the door open? His mere presence had unnerved her since Beale’s question, but Alice was a better person, far better and far happier with Daniel beside her than when they were apart. And Daniel had chosen to accept the invitation and sleep beside her. She wished she’d had hours to just lie there and watch him sleep.

  Daniel served up the burgers, drowned them in sautéed mushrooms, and sat down across the chopping block island from her. He lit two candles and turned off the lights.

  Damn, he was turning even a simple dinner into an occasion. A very romantic occasion. Marooned together on a wild but homey island. He looked exhausted, and absolutely, positively stunning. Not just the handsome man who sat across from her. She also saw the man who both helped a President rule and made her feel as if she had a home she’d never imagined. And he made both look effortless.

  Comfort food. Daniel had made them comfort food.

  “What’s for dessert?”

  He tapped the Advent calendar that was sitting on the corner of the island counter.

  “We missed last night, too.”

  “Gimme!”

  Daniel laughed that rolling chuckle of his that made her think of hillsides in the sun.

  “Don’t you want to eat first?”

  “Gimme now!” she pushed aside her plate, folded her arms across her chest, and did her best to pout.

  Daniel considered her for a long moment. That smile hiding something. Shifting for just a moment into the White House Chief of Staff mode, despite wearing a turtleneck shirt rather than a suit and tie. But then he shifted back to merely being amused. As if he’d had to adjust some thinking, tweak some master plan. She had to remember that for every molecule of her being that was a supreme analyst, he was a master strategist.

  “Here’s last night’s.” He opened a little door at the base of the pictured tree, down among the unwrapped presents. And extracted a pair of dark chocolates. So dark that they looked black under the candlelight.

  She didn’t raise her hands, but rather leaned forward and took one directly with her teeth, leaving a small nibble on his fingertips in her wake. The chocolate flowed warm, lush, creamy, rich. “That may be the best chocolate I’ve ever had.” She felt as if her body melted into a gentler version of herself along with the chocolate.

  He nodded, looking a little dazed himself.

  “You,” his voice caught. “You can open the last window.”

  She pulled over the Advent calendar.

  Once again she looked at the magnificent final image.

  “It’s us,” Daniel had texted when he saw it. The two young kittens were peeking out from the wrapping paper under the tree, deep in a game of hide-and-pounce. Crinkly balls, feather toys, catnip mice, and more spread far and wide from the tree and across the living room floor.

  On a deep, embroidered pillow, before the crackling fire, the mama and papa cat curled together. It was impossible to tell quite where one began and the other ended. Painted so finely that she wanted to stroke their fur.

  That Daniel saw the two of them that way had actually made her heart hurt. She had to cover it again with her hand to keep it in place.

  She checked the number on the door that had hidden the dark chocolate. Twenty-three. The next one opened into the side of the pillow on which the two cats curled together.

  “The last one. Twenty-four,” her voice such a soft whisper even she could barely hear it.

  “Christmas eve,” Daniel answered little louder.

  Alice looked up at Daniel. But his eyes were hidden in candlelit shadows. She wished she could see what was going on in those deep blue eyes of his, but his thoughts remained hidden.

  It was always her most important holiday of the year. She’d always loved Christmas, even though she’d usually celebrated alone. But the last weeks had become so frantic that she’d lost all track of time. She hadn’t even finished the snowflake mittens she’d been knitting as a surprise for Daniel.

  She’d barely started her special project. She’d missed her favorite season of the year. A small price, she supposed, for making the world a safer place.

  “Tomorrow we’ll be spending Christmas together.” Alice realized. “Just us.” There was a bright side. She could think of no one else she’d rather spend it with.

  He nodded toward the calendar with a “go ahead” gesture.

  Taking a deep breath, she pulled open the last door.

  “It was my grandmother’s. I had my sister send it. I texted her right before we went into North Korea.”

  The FedEx package from Tennessee. From Daniel’s home.

  She pulled the circle of gold from the recess. A trio of small diamonds in a simple band. Not posh. Not gaudy. Absolutely elegant. Absolutely Daniel.

  Alice looked at it sparkle in the candlelight.

  Daniel was anchored in the past. Family. Tradition. Honor. Love.

  Her past… Well, she wouldn’t be anchored by it. Not any longer. She would cut that cable.

  “Here,” she handed the ring to Daniel.

  He took it tentatively. His brief look of worry cleared as she held out her left hand.

  She had cut the cable and was now flying free.

  Daniel slid the warm gold over her ring finger and anchored it in place with a kiss.

  Alice and Daniel.

  They’d soar straight up into the night sky.

  “Tomorrow,” she told the man still holding her hand so tightly, “we’ll be spending our first of many Christmases together.”

  END NOTE

  Yes, the stone house exists. Years ago I sailed around this steep island deep in the heart of the Canadian Gulf Islands. It did indeed have towering cliffs, a dock crane, helipad, and sweeping lawn leading up to a beautiful house, surrounded on three sides by Douglas fir trees towering eighty feet or more above. I have never visited there, but I’d love to someday. Looking fantastically romantic, it always struck me as the perfect place to celebrate a cozy Christmas. It just took me twenty years for this image to find the right story.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  M. L. Buchman has over 40 novels in print. His military romantic suspense books have been named Barnes & Noble and NPR “Top 5 of the year” and twice Booklist “Top 10 of the Year,” placing two titles on their “Top 101 Romanc
es of the Last 10 Years” list. He has been nominated for the Reviewer’s Choice Award for “Top 10 Romantic Suspense of 2014” by RT Book Reviews. In addition to romance, he also writes thrillers, fantasy, and science fiction.

  In among his career as a corporate project manager he has: rebuilt and single-handed a fifty-foot sailboat, both flown and jumped out of airplanes, designed and built two houses, and bicycled solo around the world.

  He is now making his living as a full-time writer on the Oregon Coast with his beloved wife and is constantly amazed at what you can do with a degree in Geophysics. You may keep up with his writing and receive exclusive content by subscribing to his newsletter at www.mlbuchman.com.

  EXCERPT FROM: WHERE DREAMS ARE BORN by M.L. Buchman

  Russell locked his door behind the last of the staff and turned off his camera. He knew it was good. The images were there. He’d really captured them.

  But something was missing.

  The groove ran so clean when he slid into it. The studio faded into the background, then the strobe lights, reflector umbrellas, and blue and green backdrops all became texture and tone.

  Image, camera, man became one and they were all that mattered; a single flow of light beginning before time was counted and ending in the printed image. A ray of primordial light traveling forever to glisten off the BMW roadster still parked in one corner of the wood-planked studio. Another ray lost in the dark blackness of the finest leather bucket seats. One more picking out the supermodel’s perfect hand dangling a single, shining, golden key. The image shot just slow enough that they key blurred as it spun, but the logo remained clear.

  He couldn’t quite put his finger on it…

  Another great ad by Russell Morgan. Russell Morgan, Inc. The client would be knocked dead, and the ad leaving all others standing still as it roared down the passing lane. Might get him another Clio, or even a second Mobius.

  But… There wasn’t usually a “but.”

  The groove had definitely been there, but he hadn’t been in it. That was the problem. It had slid along, sweeping his staff into their own orchestrated perfection, but he’d remained untouched. Not part of that ideal, seamless flow.

  “Be honest, boyo, that session sucked,” he told the empty studio. Everything had come together so perfectly for yet another ad for yet another high-end glossy. Man, the Magazine would launch spectacularly in a few weeks, a high-profile mid-December launch, a never before seen twelve page spread by Russell Morgan, Inc. and the rag would probably never pay off the lavish launch party of hope, ice sculptures, and chilled magnums of champagne before disappearing like a thousand before it.

  He stowed the last camera he’d been using with the others piled by his computer. At the breaker box he shut off the umbrellas, spots, scoops, and washes. The studio shifted from a stark landscape in hard-edged relief to a nest of curious shadows and rounded forms. The tang of hot metal and deodorant were the only lasting result of the day’s efforts.

  “Morose tonight, aren’t we?” he asked his reflection in the darkened window of his Manhattan studio. His reflection was wise enough to not answer back. There wasn’t ever a “down” after a shoot, there had always been an “up.”

  Not tonight. He’d kept everyone late, even though it was Thanksgiving eve, hoping for that smooth slide of image, camera, man. It was only when he saw the power of the images he captured that he knew he wasn’t a part of the chain anymore and decided he’d paid enough triple-time expenses.

  The single perfect leg wrapped in thigh-high red-leather boots visible in the driver’s seat. The sensual juxtaposition of woman and sleek machine. An ad designed to wrap every person with even a hint of a Y-chromosome around its little finger. And those with only X-chromosomes would simply want to be her. A perfect combo of sex for the guys and power for the women.

  Russell had become no more than the observer, the technician behind the camera. Now that he faced it, months, maybe even a year had passed since he’d been yanked all the way into the light-image-camera-man slipstream. Tonight was the first time he hadn’t even trailed in the churned up wake.

  “You’re just a creative cog in the advertising photography machine.” Ouch! That one stung, but it didn’t turn aside the relentless steamroller of his thoughts speeding down some empty, godforsaken autobahn.

  His career was roaring ahead, his business fast and smooth, but, now that he considered it, he really didn’t give a damn.

  His life looked perfect, but—“Don’t think it!” —but his autobahn mind finished, “it wasn’t.”

  Russell left his silent reflection to its own thoughts and went through the back door that led to his apartment, closing it tightly on the perfect BMW, the perfect rose on the seat, and somewhere, lost among a hundred other props from dozens of other shoots, the long pair of perfect red-leather Chanel boots that had been wrapped around the most expensive legs in Manhattan. He didn’t care if he never walked back through that door again. He’d been doing his art by rote, how God-awful sad was that?

  And he shot commercial art. He’d never had the patience to do art for art’s sake. No draw for him. No fire. He left the apartment dark, only a soft glow from the blind-covered windows revealing the vaguest outlines of the framed art on the wall. Even that almost overwhelmed him.

  He didn’t want to see the huge prints by the art artists: autographed Goldsworthy, Liebowitz, and Joseph Francis’ photomosaics for the moderns. A hundred and fifty more rare, even one of a kind prints, all the way back through Bourke-White to his prize, an original Daguerre. The collection that the Museum of Modern Art kept begging him to let them borrow for a show. He bypassed the circle of chairs and sofas that could be a playpen for two or a party for twenty. He cracked the fridge in the stainless steel and black kitchen searching for something other than his usual beer.

  A bottle of Krug.

  Maybe he was just being grouchy after a long day’s work.

  Milk.

  No. He’d run his enthusiasm into the ground but good.

  Juice even.

  Would he miss the camera if he never picked it up again?

  No reaction.

  Nothing.

  Not even a twinge.

  That was an emptiness he did not want to face. Alone, in his apartment, in the middle of the world’s most vibrant city.

  Russell turned away, and just as the door swung closed, the last sliver of light, the relentless cold blue-white of the refrigerator bulb, shone across his bed. A quick grab snagged the edge of the door and left the narrow beam illuminating a long pale form on his black bedspread.

  The Chanel boots weren’t in the studio. They were still wrapped around those three thousand dollar-an-hour legs. The only clothing on a perfect body, five foot-eleven of intensely toned female anatomy, right down to her exquisitely stair-mastered behind. Her long, white-blond hair, a perfect Godiva over the tanned breasts. Except for their too exact symmetry, even the closest inspection didn’t reveal the work done there. One leg raised just ever so slightly to hide what was meant to be revealed later. Discovered.

  Melanie.

  By the steady rise and fall of her flat stomach, he knew she’d fallen asleep, waiting for him to finish in the studio.

  How long had they been an item? Two months? Three?

  She’d made him feel alive. At least when he was with her. The super-model in his bed. On his arm at yet another SoHo gallery opening, dazzling New York’s finest at another three-star restaurant, wooing another gathering of upscale people with her ever so soft, so sensual, so studied French accent. Together they were wired into the heart of the in-crowd.

  But that wasn’t him, was it? It didn’t sound like the Russell he’d once known.

  Perhaps “they” were about how he looked on her arm?

  Did she know tomorrow was the annual Thanksgiving ordeal at his parents? That he’d rather die than
attend? Any number of eligible woman floating about who’d finagled an invitation in hopes of snaring one of People Magazine’s “100 Most Eligible.” Heir to a billion or some such, but wealthy enough on his own, by his own sweat. Number twenty-four this year, up from forty-seven the year before despite Tom Cruise being available yet again.

  No.

  Not Melanie. It wasn’t the money that drew her. She wanted him. But more she wanted the life that came with him, wrapped in the man package. She wanted The Life. The one that People Magazine readers dreamed about between glossy pages.

  His fingertips were growing cold where they held the refrigerator door cracked open.

  If he woke her there’d be amazing sex. Or a great party to go to. Or…

  Did he want “Or”? Did he want more from her?

  Sex. Companionship. An energy, a vivacity, a thirst he feared that he lacked. Yes.

  But where hid that smooth synchronicity like light-image-camera-man? Where lurked that perfect flow from one person to another? Did she feel it? Could he… ever again?

  “More?” he whispered into the darkness to test the sound.

  The door slid shut, escaped from numb fingers, plunging the apartment back into darkness, taking Melanie along with it.

  His breath echoed in the vast darkness. Proof that he was alive, if nothing more.

  Time to close the studio. Time to be done with Russell Incorporated.

  Then what?

  Maybe Angelo would know what to do. He always claimed he did. Maybe this time Russell would actually listen to his almost-brother, though he knew from the experience of being himself for the last thirty years that was unlikely. Seattle. Damn! He’d have to go to bloody Seattle to find his best friend.

  He could guarantee that wouldn’t be a big hit with Melanie.

  Now if he only knew if that was a good thing or bad.

  # # #

  “If you were still alive, you’d pay for this one, Daddy.” The moment the words escaped her lips, Cassidy Knowles slapped a hand over her mouth to negate them, but it was too late.