Christmas in Harmony Harbor

by Debbie Mason

  He’d stopped calling and texting two days ago. “Of course I care. But you know as well as I do that nothing could have come of this. It was better this way.”

  “So that’s it? You’re just giving up? Forfeiting the bet?”

  “No. Why would you think that?”

  “You haven’t seemed too interested in his progress on his second angel assignment.” She took her phone from her pocket and came to Evie’s side. “The kids love him. This is at yesterday’s breakfast with Santa. It was Caine’s idea after hearing a few kids missed out when he’d cut out early after the parade to check on you. Do you remember that? He said you basically threw him out.” She shrugged. “So, kinda hard to believe you when you say you care.” She swiped the screen. “Look at this one. He took over the bedtime reading program from Julia. They’re reading A Christmas Carol. Caine says Scrooge gets a bad rap.”

  The picture showed Caine with a half smile on his handsome face as he sat in the red velvet chair beside the fireplace in the manor’s lobby with a group of children at his feet. Jamie was there with Max, who wore a pair of antlers.

  “This is my favorite though. Christmas Crafts with Caine.” She’d caught him mid-laugh. He was gluing googly eyes on a piece of red construction paper while a little girl with dark curly hair was sticking what looked like white cotton balls on his face. At the head of the small table, Jamie was laughing harder than Caine.

  Evie didn’t know what brought on the tears, seeing the relationship he had with Jamie or seeing what she was missing out on. If it weren’t for her fear, she would have been there. If it weren’t for her fear, she wouldn’t be missing him; she’d be with him.

  “It looks like he succeeded in bringing Christmas to the manor,” she said, her voice husky with emotion.

  “He sure has. Kitty says he didn’t just pass his second angel assignment; he surpassed it. So he’s two for two. That’s why I’m here, actually. It’s time for his third and final angel assignment.” She pulled an eight-by-eleven white paper angel from her jacket. “The Gallagher kids, the little ones, made this. They wanted me to put it on the tree for Caine to pick, but since you made it clear he’s not welcome here, I said I’d do it for him. And guess what?” She held up the angel. “This is my pick. And it’s kind of perfect because it looks to me like you could use some Christmas spirit around here.”

  As her meaning became clear, Evie put up her hands and backed against the sink. “No. I can’t. He can’t be here, Theia. Please. Pick another wish. Any wish but that one.”

  “What the hell is going on? You’ve gone as white as the snowman on your sweater. Evie, please tell me,” Theia said, her voice gentle and full of concern.

  Evie wanted hard-ass Theia back. She was easier to resist. But her mother wasn’t, she thought when she took Evie by the arm and walked her to the table, pulling out a chair for her to sit. And when she didn’t immediately do so, her mother lightly pressed on Evie’s shoulders with her hands.

  From the front of the store, Santa ho, ho, ho-ed. “I need to…” She went to stand up, and her mother pressed her back down. “Seamus.”

  “Aye, I’ll see to the customers. And, Evie, you’ll be answering their questions true. I see what I wasn’t seeing before. You’re scared. She got to you. The bloody Wicked Witch of Wicklow County got to you.”

  Theia’s eyes went wide and shot from Seamus to Evie. “He’s right, isn’t he? Why didn’t we see it before? Why didn’t you tell us?”

  “Who are you talking about?” her mother demanded of Theia.

  “Caine’s grandmother. What did she do, Evie? What did she threaten you with?”

  “Evangeline Christmas, if someone is threatening you, I want their name, and I want it now.”

  “They’re right.” Evie caved to the fierceness in her mother’s voice. “Seamus and Theia are right. It was Emily.” As she told them what happened five nights ago, her mother slowly lowered herself onto the chair.

  “Aaron Peters. Your old boyfriend. How did she know about him? And why would it matter to you if she sent him next time? I mean, it’s horrible what she did, and we won’t let her get away with having someone hurt or threaten you. I just don’t understand how she was able to threaten you with Aaron.”

  “Because he hurt her—didn’t he, Evie?” Theia said.

  “No, that can’t be true. Evie?”

  “He terrorized me for three months before I left New York.” And then Evie shared the nightmare she’d run away from more than a year ago. “We’d been dating for two years before I recognized the signs. The way he’d isolated me from my friends—from you too, Mom. How one week he’d be telling me how smart I was and how proud he was of me, and the next week I was clumsy, stupid, a hot mess, and he didn’t know how I’d survive without him. Then he began manipulating situations to the point I didn’t think I could survive without him.

  “I started to think I was going crazy until I had a patient whose husband was gaslighting her.” She buried her face in her hands and shook her head. “It took only two sessions for me to recognize the signs in her relationship, but it took me two years to recognize them in mine. Me, the one with the diplomas on her wall, didn’t realize what was happening to her.”

  “And you’ve earned every one of those diplomas,” her mother said. “You can’t blame yourself for this. He was charming. You were in love with him, and I can see how things I’ve said over the past year have been hurtful. I’ve never doubted your abilities, Evie. I just couldn’t understand how you were giving up a job you loved and were so well suited for…for a Christmas store.”

  “I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t function at work.” She rubbed a scratch on the table with her thumb, trying to erase it just like she’d tried to erase the residue of fear from the night she thought she was going to die. It never really went away. “Aaron didn’t want to let me go. When I first broke it off with him, he pulled out all the stops. He’d drop off a latte from my favorite coffee shop, then lunch, flowers, books. He kept it up for a month, and when he realized it wasn’t working, he changed tactics. I couldn’t go anywhere without seeing him. He was stalking me. I’d see him outside my apartment in the middle of the night. I tried to get him to stop, to get help. He tried to make me think I was the one who needed it. Then one day he went too far. He grabbed me at work, yelled at me, and shook me. Security called the police. I pressed charges and got a restraining order.”

  “Evie, why didn’t you tell me any of this?” her mom asked.

  “At first because I felt so stupid.”

  “And you thought I’d say the same.” Her mother nodded. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not an easy woman and I can be hard on you. I was hard on your father too. I think I was a little jealous of your bond and felt inadequate. And that inadequacy made me lash out, but that’s no excuse. I hope you can forgive me. And I hope you know the reason Aaron was able to fool you is also the reason you’re so good at your job. You’re kind and empathetic, always looking for the best in people. Always willing to give of your time and yourself to help someone else. You are your father’s daughter.” She gave Evie a sad smile.

  “Back then, especially that last night, I wish I had been more like you, Mom.”

  “What happened?” Theia asked.

  “The laundry in my building was in the basement. I was doing a load of wash when the lights went out. There was some light from a small window, but that only helped for a second because Aaron—I didn’t know it was him at the time—pushed me from behind and my glasses fell off. I think the phrase blind as a bat was invented for me,” she told Theia, attempting a smile. “Aaron broke my glasses, and when I went to scream, he gagged me. Then he tied me up, and that’s when the real torture began.”

  Her mother started to cry, and Evie reached for her hand. “No. He didn’t rape me, and one of my neighbors broke down the door before I suffered more than minor cuts and bruises. It was psychological torture, and I came here to recover. Holiday House became my safe
place.”

  “And now Caine’s grandmother has taken that from you.” Her mother squeezed her hand. “She’s not going to get away with this.”

  “No, she’s not.” Theia scrubbed her face. “Caine is going to lose his mind.”

  Evie’s first reaction was to yell, to plead with her not to tell him, but she pushed that back and said, “I need to be the one to tell him. If he’ll talk to me.”

  “I’m not sure he will, Evie. That’s why I was so mad at you. Don’t get me wrong. Now that I know what happened, I completely understand why you reacted the way you did.”

  “No, you don’t. You can’t because you’d never let fear stop you from doing the right thing.”

  “That’s not true. But right now you’re facing your fear. You’re not letting Emily win. You’re going to talk to Caine, and hopefully you can knock down the walls he’s put up and get him to listen. Because, Evie, I can’t lie. You shutting him out hurt him badly. You opened up an old wound.”

  They turned as Seamus walked into the kitchen. “It’s the one my sister gave him. Me too. So, lass, I’ll do what I can to help you. But right now we have a bigger problem. Emily’s on her way to Harmony Harbor.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  It didn’t matter how many blankets she was bundled up in, Caine would know the woman in the sleigh anywhere. “I don’t have time for this, Evangeline,” he said as he led the two Clydesdale horses to the front of the red wooden sleigh, the bells on their harnesses jingling. “I’m expecting paying customers any minute now.”

  It didn’t seem to matter that his assignment as the manor’s resident Christmas elf officially ended today. He’d been railroaded into taking on this last gig as a favor to Kitty after Jasper came down with a case of the sniffles. Caine was beginning to think he’d been set up. A common occurrence not only at the manor but in Harmony Harbor.

  “I’m your paying customer. Kitty made the reservation for me.”

  And there it was, evidence that Kitty and Jasper were indeed conspiring against him as he’d suspected. No doubt they’d see it as helping, not conspiring. The couple seemed to have become his self-appointed guardians.

  For some unknown reason, Kitty had taken to him immediately. Jasper had been another story, but over the past few day, there’d been a gradual softening in the older man. Today he’d acted downright grandfatherly when he’d delivered the news that Emily had made a reservation at the manor. She’d done so mere minutes after he’d called her, demanding to know how she’d threatened Evangeline. Something he’d learned from his uncle earlier that morning.

  “Caine, I know you’re upset with me.”

  “Upset? You think I’m upset with you?” he said, looking up from hitching the horses to the sleigh. It had been just under a hundred and twenty hours since he’d seen her face, but his gaze drank her in as though seeing her for the first time in years.

  As much as he’d tried to deny it, he’d been desperate to see her, desperate for her to let him in. Anger at the evidence that she’d worked her way into his heart only to throw him away now sizzled beneath the words he spoke. “Upset doesn’t begin to describe how I feel. How I felt when you cut me out of your life without an explanation.” Brilliant. He sounded pathetic. They hadn’t been together for years. They hadn’t even been together a bloody month.

  “I’m sorry. I should have taken your calls and responded to your texts. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Caine. I was scared.”

  He climbed into the sleigh, grabbed the reins, and shot her a hard look over his shoulder. “Do you think it makes me feel any better to know that you were afraid because my grandmother threatened you?”

  She blinked in surprise.

  “My uncle texted me that Theia had gotten through to you and that he’d known straightaway that it was my grandmother who’d put the fear in your eyes. Too bad you didn’t trust me enough to take care of it. To protect you.” Furious, he turned away from her and snapped the reins, the bells jingling as the horses trotted along the snow-covered path.

  “It’s not that I didn’t trust you. I freaked out, Caine. It doesn’t make me proud to admit that just the mention of Aaron, the memory of a night from more than a year ago, still had the power to terrify me.”

  “What are you talking about?” He shifted on the bench seat to look at her, and he saw what the haze of his anger had blinded him to. She was ashen, with dark shadows under her eyes.

  She made a face. “Seamus didn’t tell you what your grandmother threatened me with, did he?”

  “No. Nor did he tell me how she went about it.”

  “She sent a man. I don’t know who he was. It was too dark in the basement for me to make—”

  “Stop. Not another bloody word. Not yet,” he said as he tugged on the reins to bring the horses to a standstill on the trail leading into the woods. Then he stood and climbed over the board to sit beside Evie and take her into his arms. He buried his face in her neck, breathing in her now familiar scent of oranges and cloves. She smelled like the holidays and home. He’d missed holding her, missed her smile, missed her laughter, and he wanted to kill his grandmother for the haunted look she’d put in Evie’s eyes.

  He lifted his head. “You can tell me now.”

  “Are you sure? You—”

  “Tell me. All of it.” By the time she’d finished, he felt like putting his fist through the sleigh.

  She reached up to cup the side of his face with her gloved hand. “I’m sorry I let her win. I’m sorry I wasn’t brave enough—”

  He covered her hand with his. “It’s me who’s sorry, Evie. I shouldn’t have let you push me away. I made it about me, let myself get caught up in the hurt. Theia’s right. Sometimes I’m blind to my grandmother’s faults. I never would have thought she’d go that far. I talked to her the morning of the parade. She’d told me she’d had a change of heart and my stay at the manor under the guise of fulfilling the wish was a good idea. She even gave me a couple of suggestions how to use it to our advantage. I see now that she was playing me. She’s on her way here. To Harmony Harbor.”

  “Seamus told us. He’s worried.”

  “So am I. She’s been too quiet the past few days. But I can’t get anything out of anyone at Wicklow Developments. Her nurse hasn’t seen or heard anything that was of use to me. And my cousin won’t take my calls, which is another red flag.”

  “Because…?”

  “It means he no longer sees me as a threat.” He looked at her, her eyes filled with concern for him. “Don’t worry about me. I can handle my grandmother and my cousin. But I’m not letting her get away with this, Evie. She will pay for terrorizing you, as will the man she hired to threaten you. So will Aaron Peters.” His prominent family may have gotten him off with six months in prison and community service for the assault, but there were other ways to make him pay.

  “Aaron may not have served his full sentence, but his parents weren’t able to make his record go away. He’s paying for what he did. And while I’m all for you finding out who broke into my home and threatened me and passing the information on to the police, you can’t press charges against your grandmother, Caine. She’s dying, and I know it’s not right that she doesn’t have to face the consequences of her actions, but I don’t want her to take her revenge out on you.”

  “You let me worry about that. Just know I won’t let her hurt you again.”

  Evie leaned against him and looked up at the snow-draped trees forming an arch high above them. It was like being in an outdoor cathedral, a sweet silence broken every so often by the jingle of bells and the trill of birds. “As awful as these past few days have been, they made me realize I’d run away from my fear. I hadn’t dealt with it. I’m dealing with it now. And I won’t be doing it alone if my mom, Theia, and Seamus have their way.”

  “You can add my name to that list.”

  “On one condition.” She reached under the blanket and pulled out a white paper angel that was about three times the s
ize of the angels on the Holiday House tree. “You have to accept your final angel assignment,” she said with a smile.

  He took the paper angel from her and turned it over. “‘Help Evie make Holiday House the best Christmas shop around.’ Signed ‘Caine’s Christmas elves, George, Ella Rose, and Mia.’” He laughed and shook his head. “Did you know my name has become synonymous with Christmas at the manor? Yesterday it was Christmas Crafts with Caine. The day before that it was Christmas Carols with Caine.”

  “I saw a picture of you doing crafts with the kids. Imagine my surprise when you weren’t mouthing bah humbug but laughing. You looked like you were having fun—so did Jamie.”

  “It would have been more fun with you there. I’ve missed you, Evie.”

  “I missed you too.” She plucked the angel from his hands. “If you accept the challenge, we can make up for lost time.”

  “I accept, but I need you to make me a promise.”

  “Let me guess: classical carols instead of pop rock? Regular candy canes instead of cinnamon and chocolate?”

  “I had no idea there was such a thing as cinnamon and chocolate candy canes.”

  “That’s because you’re a Christmas virgin.”

  “I’m beginning to think you’ll turn out to be my favorite angel assignment, Evie. Which leads back to my promise. However this ends, me winning the bet or you, we won’t let it come between us. We’ll keep it strictly business. I know you hate everything about the office tower, but I do have the perfect space for Holiday House. And I won’t charge you rent for a year.”

  “You know, that almost sounds like you think you’re going to win the bet.”

  “Evie, I wrote the book on the secrets to succeeding in business. There isn’t a company I can’t turn around.”

  * * *

  Two days later, Evie had had enough with Caine and his ideas for turning Holiday House into a success story. “Please, I’m begging you, pick another wish assignment.” Evie plucked a green angel off the tree. “This doesn’t look too hard.” She turned it over. “Help Mrs. Whittaker decorate for Christmas. Wait a second. I thought Liam already got that wish.” She put the angel on the sales counter, making a mental note to call Mrs. Whittaker. She wasn’t allowed to double dip in the angel wishes pool.