by Sarah Spade
Auld Lang Mine
Sarah Spade
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
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1
Tristan
God, I hate flying.
Way I see it, if we were supposed to be flitting about, high up in the sky, then we’d have wings. Like Cupid or something. I could handle fluffy white wings sprouting out of my back because then I’d be in control of how fast I flapped, or how high I flew.
Trapped in a monstrous beast of machinery a couple thousand feet up in the air? Where all I can do is basically pray that when it comes down again, it’s not in a fiery crash that leaves my ashes scattered somewhere across east bumblefuck?
Pleasant thoughts this Christmas Eve, yeah, but I can’t help it. I never fly if I can avoid it; I’d rather drive, and considering Cali traffic, that’s saying something.
Salem is more than three thousand miles from Palo Alto. I did the math. Even if I only stop to sleep at night, it would take me at least four days to get there.
Not enough time. I had to fly.
Damn it.
Flight isn’t bad. I’ll give it that. Anyone who was rushing off to visit family has already done their travel and the plane is more empty than full. I have my row to myself, and I purposely sit on the edge so that I don’t have to look out the window if I don’t want to.
Besides, there’s a pretty blonde sitting a couple seats down from me in the first class section. Throughout our six hour flight, I catch her watching me a few times, and she makes more trips to the bathroom than anyone would ever need. The last time she goes, she lingers by my seat for a moment, an invitation in the curve of her lips.
Do I want to join her?
I almost do.
When I was fresh out of college, I would’ve been the one to approach her and see if she wanted to join the mile high club with me. Go back five years, and I had a new girlfriend every couple of weeks. While they were all fun, and I enjoyed each and every one of them, they never lasted. My job always came first and it’s hard to keep someone in your life when they know they’re a firm second.
And then there was Dani—
Nope. Uh-uh. Not going there.
Needless to say, I pass on the pretty blonde’s proposition. She returns from the bathroom a few minutes later wearing a haughty expression and then stays in her seat the rest of the flight.
So do I. White-knuckled and tense, I don’t relax an inch until we land.
The second I leave the Logan Airport in Boston and get slapped in the face with an icy wind and snow? Tighten right up again. Holy shit. It might’ve been cold for Palo Alto when I left—the high was only sixty degrees—but Boston is cold.
Why the fuck would anyone want to live here?
And why—why—would Max decide to chuck sunny California to the side in order to move to this crowded, dingy, absolutely frozen shithole of a city?
As I go to baggage claim and grab my suitcase, I admit that I know the answer to that question. Because in the time since I last saw my business partner, Max has found the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with.
In Salem.
Massachusetts.
Where it’s fucking freezing.
It’s why I’m here, too. If Max Dennis thinks he’s going to leave me handling the California side of the business without coming all the way to Salem first, then, well, I’ve already got my answer. Getting laid on the regular has made him lose his goddamn mind.
Bad enough I’ve got my father hounding me, trying to get me to leave my business in favor of taking over his, but to have Max ditching our firm, too? Yeah, not without a face to face. So I booked a flight, hopped on a plane while cursing his goddamn name, and here I am.
And I probably should’ve brought a winter coat with me.
There’s a trace of snow sticking to the asphalt in the parking lot. Hunching my shoulders, my suitcase slipping on the slushy road, I head out to where my rental car is waiting for me. One good thing about my aggravation. It warms me up some as my thoughts go back to the two bombshells that have been dropped on me this December.
I admit, I was… well, stunned is probably the best word for how I felt when Max blurted out that his sister is engaged to some guy in Massachusetts. Zack something or other. I don’t know. Considering it’s gonna be her last name before too long, I should probably learn it.
My grip tightens around the handle of my suitcase until the plastic bites into the underside of my fingers. I hear a crack.
Shit. I’m still not okay with it.
Dani. Getting married.
And Max. Crazy bastard actually went and bought a ring for the woman he fell for last Christmas, only to lose her before finding her again a couple of weeks ago. I swear, I thought he was nuts when he flew home last year, convinced that the one night stand he had would be the great love of his life. He hadn’t been laid in a while and I chalked his insanity up to the night he spent with her. When he found out that she’d played him by giving him a false name and an out of service number, I figured that was the end of that.
Until Dani told her brother that she was engaged and Max flew out to the east coast to talk some sense into her. At least, that was his plan. Considering I spent the last two weeks hoping that he’d pull it off, I was all for it. It might have been more than a year since my fling with Dani ended, but I never expected her to find a serious boyfriend when she traded our California offices for Massachusetts.
Seems like the whole falling in love bullshit is catching, though. Because, only yesterday, my best pal had the nerve to call me up and tell me that he’s sticking around Salem, too. The blonde beauty he met last year? She turned out to be Dani’s friend—and one of our ad managers. And since Allison lived here, Max decided he would stay.
I’ve known Max for close to fifteen years. I’m the neurotic one. He’s the stubborn one. Together, we’ve worked out a fucking amazing partnership that’s made us both loaded. Our business is a success and worth the sixty plus hours we pour into it every week. He’s a workaholic who knows what he wants, when he wants it, and he’ll never settle for less—and I know for damn sure that, once he’s set his mind on something, there’s no one on earth who will get him to change it.
Max proposing to this Allison? It’s a done deal. I can’t stop him. He’d hate me if I even tried. Max might’ve butt his nose into my short-lived relationship with Dani, but I understood that. She was his sister and I might’ve crossed a line going for her, no matter how hot and smart I thought she was. I deserved that shiner.
And now Dani is engaged to some guy, Max is hoping to be the next one getting hitched, and I’m only fooling myself if I tell them both that I’ve flown all this way to give them my congratulations.
The car rental attendant is waiting for me. Guy is smart; he’s so bundled up that all I can see are the keys he’s holding out to me, and the empty palm he flashes as he waits hopefully for a tip. I slip him a twenty, say thanks when he eagerly takes my suitcase from me and puts it in the trunk, then slide into the car.
It’s nothing like the Porsche I drive back home, but it’ll do. At least it has GPS. I plug in the address for the hotel I booked last minute and head carefully out of the lot. It’s still flurrying, the snow piling up on the edges of the road. I’ve never had to drive in this shit, though,
and I go slowly.
Besides, the Christmas Eve office party Max insisted I meet him and Allison at isn’t until seven. It’s only three o’clock now. I’ve got plenty of time.
And if he thinks I’m wearing an ugly sweater to that thing, he’s even crazier than I already think he is.
2
Lindy
“I’m not going out there.”
Sheila continues to fluff out the skirt of the dress she stuffed me into before shoving me into the back of her van. It’s a tulle skirt, a soft pink and gold medley that she says looks great against my light brown skin, and it might’ve gotten a little squashed when I tried to make a break for it.
My escape was short-lived. Sheila knew better. She locked me in the van, next to the piles of chafing dishes and sterno cans, and only let me out when we got to Colonial Hall. I didn’t even have my phone with me, since I left it behind in the wake of her whirlwind arrival earlier this evening, and I realized that there was nothing for me to do except follow her into the Hall’s magnificent kitchen.
But there’s no way in hell that I’m going out to the party being held in one of the massive ballrooms.
“Seriously, Sheil,” I tell her. “I don’t know why you’re wasting your time. You need another server or someone to set up the trays, that’s fine. But I’m not crashing a Christmas party I wasn’t invited to.”
My cousin is pretending she can’t hear me. Maybe she can’t. After she checked in with Madison, letting her know that she’d arrived with all of the prepared food, Sheila grabbed me by the hand and shoved me into the bathroom off of the kitchen. The wall is thin and the noise from the Christmas party Sheila is catering is bleeding into the small room. Between the thump and the bass and the bells of some real loud Christmas music, plus the hum of a bunch of different conversations, it’s not a stretch that she doesn’t hear me.
Knowing Sheila, though? I’d put money down on her pretending. She’s got this brilliant idea that I shouldn’t be left alone to wallow in pity by myself on Christmas Eve. So what if she’s got this big catering gig? To Sheila, this was a perfect opportunity to drag my sorry butt out of my house.
Which she did. Literally. She threw the dress at me, told me to get ready, then grabbed me by the arm and tossed me into the back of her van. If it was anyone else, I might’ve recognized I was being kidnapped and screamed bloody murder, but this was Sheila and I learned a long time ago just to go with it.
Ever since we were kids, I’ve always privately thought of my cousin as Hurricane Sheila. She’s a force of nature all on her own. She’s strong and swift and knows exactly how to pressure me into doing what she wants. I could try to put up a fight but, in the end, she always wins and it’s never worth the trouble.
I know her heart’s in the right place. I’ve been moping for months, ever since Karl called off our engagement in the beginning of September. I hadn’t gotten over flunking out of my online classes the semester before—I spent so much time trying to convince Karl we could make it work, I screwed up school—and he dumped me barely two weeks after my twenty-eighth birthday.
Add that to the fact that the local bookstore I’ve been working at—and later managing—since I was a teen finally went belly up and closed the day before Thanksgiving, and I’ve been a wreck for most of the year. I couldn’t face the rest of my family, so I decided to write Christmas off as a bad bet and start over with a fresh new year.
I’d find a new job, sign up to re-do my credits, and start a search for a new love of my life as soon as January hit. December was a lost cause. I was over this year.
Next year would be better. It had to be.
Hurricane Sheila didn’t agree. She thought my self-imposed hibernation was ridiculous, and while she understood why I might want to hide out from the rest of the family—she’s a Walsh too, after all—she decided that there was no way I meant her when I said I wanted to be left alone.
The two of us are hogging the area by one of the sinks. Sheila has her giant purse sitting on the edge and she keeps reaching into. I like to tease that it’s a Mary Poppins bag since she always seems to pull more and more out of it.
Like now. First a brush, then some lip gloss, and finally a small body mist that smells like gingerbread. A silver necklace that hangs low, settling in my cleavage. The scoop neck to the top of this dress is super deep and I’ve got more on display than I probably should. I keep tugging at it, trying to hide the edge of my bra, but Sheila slaps my hands.
“Leave it.”
“It’s too low.”
“It’s sexy, Lindy, that’s what it is.”
I roll my eyes. “Tell me that’s not why I’m here. I told you. I’m over Karl.” It’s not quite a lie. It’s not that I miss him really. I just hate living alone. “That doesn’t mean I’m looking for his replacement.”
So that part might be a lie. It’s been close to a year since I got a little action. Being so sexually pent up is another reason why I want to be alone. There’s a good chance that I’d jump on the first dick that showed me a little attention and, Jesus, I don’t ever want to be that desperate.
Sheila just nods, but I know from the fierce look in her dark brown eyes that I’m not fooling either of us. My cousin likes to think she knows what’s best for me. Problem is she usually does.
Ugh.
Digging deep in her bag, she pulls out a pale pink wristlet. It’s threaded with gold and silver in an elegant pattern. It matches the tulle skirt like it’s been made for it.
“Here.”
“Does it have my phone in there?”
Sheila snorts. “As if you’d call anyone else for help. No. But it does have your lip balm.”
Of course, it does. Because I might be able to go an evening without my phone—especially since it’s Christmas Eve and I’ll gladly miss all the concerned phone calls from the rest of the family—but I could never go more than an hour without my lip balm.
When I don’t rush to take the wristlet from her, Sheila grabs my hand and slips it onto my wrist. Once it’s hanging, she pats the top of my hand with her fingers. “It’s a party. Have some fun. Live a little. It’s Christmas!”
“I wasn’t invited,” I argue. And that’s true. These people won’t be my friends, or my family. It’s a party being thrown by Sheila’s clients. “I won’t know anyone here.”
She wags her eyebrows up at me. “That’s the idea.”
And… I finally understand the brilliance behind Sheila’s mad plan. I won’t know anyone here. Even better, they won’t know me. Maybe I can fake it, play it off like I’m a friend of a friend of someone who is at the party. There’s no one who’ll judge me for going back to school at twenty-seven, only to fail miserably. Who will ask questions about the wedding that will never happen, or wonder why Karl left me after all these years?
For the first time in a long time, maybe I could have some fun and not worry about how I’ll inevitably screw it all up. There’s only a week left to this year. Why shouldn’t I do something with it?
I stop arguing. Sheila beams over at me, as if she can sense that I’ve given in. Just like she thought I would. Grabbing her big purse, she reaches in and pulls something else out.
Then she says, “Take this, Lindy, you’ll need it,” as she presses something a little big against the palm of my hand.
As I wonder why it feels hard and cold and kind of sharp, Sheila opens the bathroom door and gives me a push out into the main hall. As much as I want to run back into the bathroom and hide, I know that Sheila is perched just inside, waiting for me to try if I chicken out. And, I mean, I could return to the kitchen, but she’ll find me there and, if she doesn’t, her partner in crime, Madison, will rat me out.
If I had the key to her van, maybe I could wait out the party in there. But I don’t have the key. I have a wristlet that feels like it’s empty and whatever it is she gave me before she shoved me out of the bathroom.
I look down at it. It’s a metal venetian half mask, a bril
liant silver, with a thin white ribbon to keep it tied securely over my eyes.
What the—
A mask? That’s… odd. Why does she think I would need this?
Tristan
It doesn’t take long for me to realize that I’m at the wrong party.
Because this is supposed to be the holiday party for the Salem branch of our marketing firm, Max insisted that I make an appearance since I’ve flown all the way across the country to see him and meet his Allison. He knows I’m not much of a party guy—neither is he, come to think of it—but if I wanted to see Max before Christmas, it would be at something called Colonial Hall.
Of course, that also might have something to do with the fact that Allison is one of the ad managers who planned the shindig during her free time. Seems she loves the holiday, and since Max obviously loves her, he’s spending his Christmas Eve at an ugly sweater Christmas party.
That’s my first clue. Within minutes of entering the venue, I flag down someone who looks like they work at the hall and asked for directions to the Christmas party. He’s juggling a couple of bags and just manages to jerk his chin in one direction.
The first thing I notice is that the ballroom is decorated with silver and gold. The second? Everyone milling around the perfectly set tables, approaching the buffet or taking to the dance floor, is wearing some kind of mask.
There’s a full basket placed on a small table by the entrance. I grab a mask from inside it and put it on since that seems to be what I’m supposed to do. Like the others here, the mask only covers half my face. You think it would be easy to find Max or Dani. I know their faces as well as I know my own and even with the mask, I should be able to recognize them.
I don’t, though. And that, coupled with the fancy dress code, just furthers my suspicion that I’m at the wrong party. There’s not an ugly sweater in sight, and my suit fits in with the rest of the guests. No way Max would’ve given me the wrong information about the sweaters so after I walk the room a couple of times and don’t see him, I figure I’m in the wrong room.